Style in the what again?
More about the "Style in the Essay" class, with periodic pictures of places I'm doing my course prep work (and a bit of writing).
As I explained before, I thing that blogs are today's essays, at least when viewing "the essay" as a genre via which private individuals share their personal perspectives on matters of public interest.
Inviting students to write blog posts also allows them to define their own audiences, and how they want to appear to and interact with those audiences. This helps avoid the traditional writing class emphasis that leads students to ask "how can I please the instructor, or understand what the instructor thinks the hypothetical audience would want?" Instead, they communicate to their peers and to me what THEIR goals are, and why, and we then help them craft a prose style that meets those goals.
Working in the cafe at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow
while Orhan studied words and read about boat riggings.
(September 2)
Over the course of ten weeks, students write and revise six entries. Would-be bloggers are often told to have about that many posts "in the can," ready to go before they launch a blog, partly to cover any lulls or absences they might have, and partly to work out what they want their persona and focus to be before launching.
In keeping with that advice, students won't actually publish their blogs until the end of the course (and then only if they want to).
As for drafts, the pattern for each will go like this:
- Draft 1 = Bring about 300 words to class. Learn and practice an expansion strategy for half of class, and a style exercise for the next half, workshop format.
- Draft 2 = Bring about 500 words to class. This may consist of what they did in class the previous session, or of more if they wanted to make changes. Learn and practice an expansion strategy for half of class, and a style exercise for the next half, workshop format.
- Draft 3 = Send to me for comments.
- Draft 4 = Revise based on my comments.
We'll do six rounds of this (with some overlap in timing -- i.e. starting entry #2 while finishing up entry #1). At the end of the quarter, students will do final revisions and create their blog site.
Throughout the quarter, each student will also keep a process log, and I will check in weekly to ask questions and offer encouragement and comments.
This is similar to last time I taught 18, except that I have a lot more structure for the sequence of drafts, and the process log is new.
Grading will be based on level of engagement (drafts completed on time, process log entries completed on time) with "completeness" being a matter of (a) approximate length and (b) responsiveness to peers' and my feedback. Since grades will NOT be based on "quality" (i.e. how closely a piece approximates what I think a good blog post does), our feedback will be focused not on how the student can meet some supposedly universal external criteria, but on how each entry is meeting the student's own goals, and how it can do so more.
This last part is essential. We (writing teachers) know from decades of research that writing to a rubric does not teach students to be more flexible, self-aware, rhetorically savvy writers. At best it teaches them how to guess what a teacher wants and then deliver that. We also know from educational research that deep learning happens when students take risks (which most will not do if they fear damage to their grade) and when they are motivated internally, rather then extrinsically (i.e. by grades).
A contract grading approach helps overcome some of these problems while still satisfying the institutional need for grades. It also, I believe, helps me as the teacher avoid what Irv Peckham calls "the objectification of student writing." He contrasts objectifying student writing and reading it:
This is similar to last time I taught 18, except that I have a lot more structure for the sequence of drafts, and the process log is new.
Grading will be based on level of engagement (drafts completed on time, process log entries completed on time) with "completeness" being a matter of (a) approximate length and (b) responsiveness to peers' and my feedback. Since grades will NOT be based on "quality" (i.e. how closely a piece approximates what I think a good blog post does), our feedback will be focused not on how the student can meet some supposedly universal external criteria, but on how each entry is meeting the student's own goals, and how it can do so more.
This last part is essential. We (writing teachers) know from decades of research that writing to a rubric does not teach students to be more flexible, self-aware, rhetorically savvy writers. At best it teaches them how to guess what a teacher wants and then deliver that. We also know from educational research that deep learning happens when students take risks (which most will not do if they fear damage to their grade) and when they are motivated internally, rather then extrinsically (i.e. by grades).
Today's view of the Clyde from a hotel cafe.
Gün and Orhan went food shopping.
A contract grading approach helps overcome some of these problems while still satisfying the institutional need for grades. It also, I believe, helps me as the teacher avoid what Irv Peckham calls "the objectification of student writing." He contrasts objectifying student writing and reading it:
When we grade/evaluate an essay, we objectify it. In total disregard of Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional theory, we reduce the text to an object, not a medium for inter-subjective exchange, the dialectical flow of thought between a reader, a text, and the writer’s ideas within the text, and the culture speaking through the writer, reader, and text. No, rather than something alive with thought, it’s an object to be graded. The text has in a sense lost its meaning. It is little wonder that students dislike being graded and teachers dislike grading. To grade “objectively,” the teacher has to objectify, take the life out of a text, kill what they imagine they value.
What a difference when the teacher is allowed to “read” the text, to interact with it, to listen to the life within it and respond to it inter-subjectively. Suddenly, writing is alive: the student’s text and the teacher’s response—hopefully, intermixed with other students’ responses. Suddenly, it is a pleasure to be reading and writing back. And for the student, it is a pleasure to have been read. It’s not overly difficult to link this theory of reading or objectifying student writing to Freire’s theory of objectifying peasants.I'll keep returning to this over the next couple of weeks as I finalize the course plan. As always, comments and questions and suggestions are welcome.
Two more places I worked on course prep
while Gün and Orhan finished the food shopping.
(We all had lunch at the first place, while Dev
contemplated the life of a hookah smoker.)
while Gün and Orhan finished the food shopping.
(We all had lunch at the first place, while Dev
contemplated the life of a hookah smoker.)
How do you work with students to help them visualize their audience, as in "not everyone" - with demographics, etc? I'm thinking Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford's Audience evoked / invoked. For a similar class I ask students to study writers and publications (last spring we worked with The Atlantic) to deduce (technically induce) elements of style used by different writers and demographics of readers, and then tailor to that audience. It does happen that the typical reader of the Atlantic is not dissimilar from their teacher (in this case, me)...
ReplyDeleteYour method of blogging has the advantage that students could aim at readers of a demographic closer to themselves in age, education, interests, etc. since Atlantic, New Yorker, etc. have a typically older audience.
I'll be interested to hear how this works for you. My students like Zinsser's On Writing Well as inspiration for their personal voice.
ps: Hookah is a style! Maybe not for birds?
Hookah is a style? Not a good one for birds, admittedly. Dev decided against taking up the habit.
DeleteIn this class, their audience is, as you note, their peers, and so I have the class talk about what they read, what they like, what they expect, and so on. (UCD's student body is fantastically diverse in a lot of ways, so there is a good range even in one class.)
ReplyDeleteWe also do audience analyses of pieces they read, and stylistic imitations of those pieces. I would love to know more about how you do your exercises. What kinds of questions do you ask, or do they ask? How do you guide their interpretation? Also, aren't you retired, or is this still your post-retirement summer teaching?